We are at a critical point in history when it comes to enabling living wages.

Inflation and the rising cost of living poses big challenges to workers worldwide, leaving one third of them unable to earn a basic standard of living.

However, next to big risks, this is also the time of big opportunities.

The past years have seen increasingly more private and public sector initiatives on living wages. And with the recent publication of the guidance on living wages by the International Labour Organization comes a more aligned understanding of the concept and what is needed to progress.

For more information, read our report on Living Wages: https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/uploaded/2024/06/IDH_Living_Wage_Thought_Piece_4.4.pdf

In this new podcast episode, we discuss with Veronique Bovee, Deputy Director at Proforest, what aspects the palm oil industry can improve to achieve sustainability goals and what are the risks of the EU deforestation regulation on smallholder farmers. During the discussion, Veronique also highlights the positive aspects of the collaboration between IDH and Proforest and how we can work together towards a more sustainable palm oil industry.

In this episode Celine Gilart, Director of Social Impact and Sustainability at Twinings, provides concrete examples of how women’s empowerment and gender equality can work to not only improve lives, but also be an engine for economic growth and business. It is clear there is a long way to go before we can say that all supply chains are safe and empowering for women, but efforts are being made to get there. IDH and Twining’s are collaborating, alongside Unilever, Ethical Tea Partnership, Tesco and Taylors, through “The Women’s Safety Accelerator Fund” to address the root causes of gender-based violence in the tea supply chain in Assam, West Bengal and South India. This program works with both management level, and the tea garden workers, along with government service providers, to tackle harmful social norms, such as patriarchal attitudes, as well as lack of access to information and knowledge. Listen to the podcast to find out more.

Attempts to make our value chains gender inclusive can often mean adding women into the picture, but not really changing the power dynamics between men and women.

IDH believes that to make our value chains sustainable, traditional norms, behaviours, and power dynamics need to be challenged and transformed. And male engagement on gender issues will be an essential part of that work.

How can male engagement help make business gender transformative? Listen to the podcast in conversation with Cesar Maita, Gender Lead and Matthew Spencer, Global Director Landscapes at IDH.

Learn more about IDH’s work on gender transformative business in this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLVPKs-ywfM

How is IDH working toward transforming the Palm Oil market? This podcast is a conversation between Neha Simlai, Senior Program Manager IDH, and Sneha Maheshwari, Program Officer, Palm Oil both based at the IDH India office. They discuss the potential of regional Asian markets, in particular India, to turn the tide towards responsible palm oil uptake and production.

Meet Talash Huibers, a young Kenyan agripreneur who is passionate about using her business to bring a transformative change to the world and who proofs that agriculture is cool and lucrative especially for the youth and women. She is the founder of InsectiPro, a company that is in business of growing insects.

In this IDH podcast, our communication manager in IDH Kenya, Solomon Irungu, had a conversation with her and she explains how she sees the world in color, not in black and white.

Find out more about the work InsectiPro and IDH undertake together in this article: https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/news/is-this-black-soldier-fly-the-answer-to-food-security-in-africa/

Seafood MAP is a globally inclusive digital platform to compile, accelerate, and improve all fisheries and aquaculture efforts on the pathway to sustainability. In this podcast, both Angel Matamoro, Chief CSR and Institutional Relations Officer of Nueva Pescanova Group and Annika Mackensen, Advisor Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture at GIZ, explain why they support Seafood MAP.

Slowly but surely, European commitments for using responsible and conversion-free soy are becoming concrete, as we can see in the 3rd European Soy Monitor that was recently launched. But what does responsible and conversion-free soy actually mean and how is uptake calculated in a commodities environment where transparency is lacking?

In the new Sustainable Trade Podcast episode, Guilherme do Couto Justo, Program Manager of Soy at IDH spoke with Heleen van den Hombergh, Senior Advisor and Convener for Sustainable Agrocommodities at IUCN Netherlands, Coordinator of the Dutch Soy Platform and CSI – the Collaborative Soy Initiative, and Doutzen Wagenaar, Sustainable Agriculture Expert at Schuttelaar & Partners in order to get the expert insight on the challenges and progress made in the sustainability of soy for a more transparent supply chain.

To see the data in-depth, read the recent Soy Monitoring Report: https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/publication/european-soy-monitor-report-2019/

In April of this year, 2021, 12 companies came together in a call to action to help eradicate poverty through a commitment to build a living wage economy together. IDH is working to secure living wages through the Roadmap on Living Wages - a platform of more than 30 companies that work to strengthen international alignment and build tangible solutions regarding living wage. Eosta, a leading importer, packer, and distributor of organically grown fresh produce, is a member of this platform and regards living wage as the most important topic in the social domain for the coming years. We spoke with Eosta’s CEO, Volkert Engelsman and Annelotte Crena de Iongh, Program manager at IDH, to better understand the work that is underway and what still needs to be done to secure living wages at a global level.

The discussions you will hear in this podcast were all part of a learning event on cocoa traceability organized in October 2020 by Beyond Chocolate. Beyond Chocolate is a partnership for a more sustainable Belgian chocolate sector, and one of the critical targets that partners have committed to is “ending deforestation linked to cocoa production for the Belgian market by 2030”. The challenges and complexities within achieving this target are explored throughout the podcast.

For this conversation, IDH brought together key cocoa experts such as, Andrew Brooks, Head of Cocoa Sustainability at Olam, Kristin Komives, Director of Programs at ISEAL, Dr Emmanuel Opoku, Deputy Chief Executive Officer at COCOBOD, Michael Ndoping the Managing Director at ONCC, Adegoke Adeola the President of the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria and Cedric van Cutsem, Associate Director of the Cocoa Life Program at Mondelez.